Clear Lake, SD

Clear Lake is Deuel County’s seat, named for the lake that gives the city its simplest landmark. The bigger local story arrives each summer at Crystal Springs Ranch, where the surrounding glacial hills form a natural rodeo bowl. E. W. Weisel and his family staged the first professionally sanctioned Crystal Springs rodeo in 1946, and local organizers later kept it alive when the original ranch operation changed hands. The Clear Lake museum holds rodeo programs, saddles, photographs, and other pieces of that history. Rodeo Days grew into a community-wide stretch of events, but the basic picture has not changed: a prairie county seat, a ring of coteau hills, and a rodeo that came out of the landscape.